Friday, May 10, 2013

Emerging Ideas about Content of Final Report...

Unfortunately, most of the research I find myself collecting (after partially reading it) is probably only going to make an appearance in the final report of the research, which I will begin writing in September, 2013.

As I've been collecting research (and my thoughts!), I've been writing notes on various themes that I will write about in the final report. These are my very rough thought-notes on these themes:

-How many women edit

-Survey, issues with
that, active editors, editors that identify as male/female, how many
women edit in Indian community

-Lack of dialogue about
women editors and unique barriers in the global south

-Heather Ford's “The
Missing Wikipedians”

-"Wikipedia
is not the sum of all human knowledge: do we need a wiki for open
data?"

-Some more discussion
of traditional knowledges, etc.

-What are some of the
unique barriers faced by women in the south (Mentioned in Wikipedia
page on systemic bias)

-What is missing? As
pointed out byWarewitz in her brief articles “Who Speaks for the
Women of Wikipedia?” Little to no work has been done with current
female editors. Many outsiders are speaking about it, but little is
being asked of the already established/involved editors. This is
where I come in. Even Sue Gardner takes sources from outside of
Wikipedia in her article “9 reasons why women don't edit”

-See CIS' work and
reports on this

-Research Justification
(Why should we identify these barriers)

-Look how Wikipedia is
being used (who is citing, how often it's being cited, etc.)

-what happens when we
have a bias in knowledge repositories? What is the societal effect of
content bias on Wikipedia?

-Halavais
& Lackaff argue: “If
an encyclopedia is only as good as its weakest areas, it is important
to identify these weaknesses” (431).

-Lack of dialogue
about women editors in the developing world, particularly in India

-Example of women
behaving as the keepers of “local” or “traditional” knowledge
in India—this is gendered knowledge, but there is no place for it
on Wikipedia, even though many argue that preserving local culture
and knowledge is very important.

Important
resources (as of May 10th):

-S.
C. Herring. Gender and power in on-line communication.
In
J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff, editors, The Handbook of Language and
Gender, pages 202–228. Blackwell, 2003.